we're living on cash in Portland, Oregon and paying down $70k by 12/31/2011

a couple of links

Hi Everyone! In the past month we’ve been basking in the freedom of being debt free, and enjoying sharing our story with friends and family. It’s powerful to know that choices we made in the past year so drastically influenced our life and will help shape a new financial story for our family.

I haven’t yet announced in this forum that we’re now parents! We’re starting our family life debt free, which feels wonderful. Everything feels timed to perfection.

On the less positive side, around the same time I realized I was pregnant I also realized that I hadn’t been keeping up with my business accounting very well this year. I discovered a huge gap in my photography income to expense ratio, having spent much more than I thought toward re-establishing my little photography business. It looks like I was so busy micromanaging personal expenses that I neglected to watch my professional expenses and ended up getting “death by paper cut” in a lot of little expenses that added up to quite a sum. It was a rookie mistake to miss the bigger picture snapshot of my business accounting. I’m still reeling from that wake up call, and trying to figure out whether I will be able to close the gap, or should consider the difference lost “start up” expenses for the year. Whether people are generous in their portrait followup sales will make a big difference to this outcome, because I have not been able to charge what I “should” be charging in session fees this year, rather hoping for the followup sales. (Another bad idea.)

I’ll leave you with a couple of interesting links I’ve had in open tabs for a week now.

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One thought on “a couple of links”

Congratulations! You guys must be so happy to be starting a family debt-free. I loved reading your journey to be debt-free and I hope you continue blogging here with some tips (I enjoy reading all the links you post, you seem to find great articles). Thanks & congratulations again.